"That will do," he heard sharply; "you are bringing fire on us with that white mount of yours, and it would be a pity to see him damaged. Get off back out of rifle-fire, or I shall have you on my hands wounded."
Phit! Phit! A couple of bullets whizzed past Sultan's nose at that precise instant, and in a moment he was dancing on his hind legs, thrashing the air with those handsome fore legs of his, shaking his head, and neighing, while foam flecked his lips and soiled his beautiful arched neck.
"D'you hear? Confound you, young Keith!" shouted the officer. "You'll get me shot next. Clear off, for you're drawing fire from the whole of the enemy front upon us."
Crouching in his little hollow, the officer watched as the punctilious Geoff pulled Sultan to his feet again with a steady hand, and, sitting very upright—bolt upright—in fact, the position adapted for formal parades, saluted his senior.
"Hang it," he shouted; "go off!" and then smiled—an indulgent smile—as Sultan broke into a furious gallop and went off at mad speed across the open. "Fine boy! Nice boy!" that officer said as he glanced backward from his "funk hole". "Knew his father—and that's the sort of thing he would have done; and how proud he would have been of the boy if only he'd lived to see him."
Plunk! A bullet struck the lip of the parapet which one of his men had hurriedly thrown up before the officer, and sent a shower of sand and gravel all over him. Indeed, it drew his attention once more to the battle now proceeding and to the position of his own men. With glasses fixed to his eyes, and himself kneeling in his little shelter, the officer scanned the Turkish lines with the eye of an expert and a critic. Undoubtedly the enemy had taken up a strong position, and, moreover, were in strong force and were well supported by guns of large calibre. There was, in fact, no question of the British Expeditionary Force coming in contact with an enemy indifferently organized, badly armed, and meagrely supplied. No! Those Turkish troops sent to meet the British, and those others then fighting in the Caucasus Mountains, were the product of German energy and German money. They were part of that vast organization built up during some forty years past, which aimed at making the Kaiser the Emperor of the World, and not merely of humble Europe. If there had been any doubt about the question of the arming of this force which barred the progress of our soldiers, the shells flung at the latter were sufficient indication, while the rattle of rifles and the sharper staccato tack-tack of machine-guns proved the case without room for doubt or argument. Looking at those positions, those prepared trenches of the enemy, and guessing at their number of troops, which was considerable, it seemed almost hopeless for the Expeditionary Force to expect to be able to advance farther. And yet, as the dusk of evening came on, and the fighting died down, there was no sign of a British retirement.
"We're going to hang on to our trenches all night," Geoff told his friend Philip when he hunted him out, after snatching a meal at Head-quarters. "You mark my words! To-morrow will see something that'll startle the Turks and send 'em flying."